On the day I landed in Munich with my Israeli teammates to participate in the 1972 Olympic Games, one German newspaper reported: ‘Shaul Ladany is walking on familiar ground.’
As someone who had witnessed at first-hand the horrors of Bergen-Belsen concentration camp as a child, the German media had become taken with the story of my return to a country whose people had once attempted to eliminate Jews from the face of the Earth.
Yet all too soon my pride in this had turned to horror when, in the early hours, in my bed in the Olympic village, I was shaken awake by a fellow athlete who’d heard a gunshot.
Palestinian terrorists had just claimed their first victim in what would become the cold-hearted massacre of 11 Israeli athletes — though I was, of course, unaware of that fact.
Jeremy Corbyn in 2014 holding a wreath just yards from the graves of the terrorists behind the Munich massacre
Still in my pyjamas, I cautiously opened the main door of our apartment and saw a dark-skinned, heavily armed man standing guard at the adjacent apartment.
Someone was pleading with him for mercy.
‘The Jews are not human,’ replied the terrorist.
In one calculated sentence, he had distilled the very essence of what it means to be anti-Semitic.
So, imagine my disgust when, last summer — at my home in Israel — I saw the Daily Mail’s front page picture of the leader of the British Labour Party holding a wreath in 2014 just a few yards from the graves of terrorists who masterminded the Munich massacre.
Shaul Ladany (middle with Israel top) is an Israeli Holocaust survivor and two-time Olympian. He survived Belsen concentration camp and the 1972 Munich massacre, which saw Black September terrorists take 11 Israeli athletes hostage
It confirmed what I, a committed Anglophile, have suspected for some time: that the dark force of anti-Semitism that was once associated with Nazism had seeped into Britain’s political life in a way I could never have imagined.
And nowhere is this poison more prevalent than — as the Mail has reported week in, week out — at the very top of the Labour Party, which was founded to promote social justice and equality.
As I see it, Labour’s once-cherished principles have now been systematically trashed by Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership, a man described by one of his own veteran Jewish MPs, the much admired Margaret Hodge, as an ‘anti-Semitic racist’.
As a result, Britain’s reputation as a beacon of tolerance is being seriously undermined.
This week, the festering sore of bigotry in Labour has caused even more offence following the odious behaviour of the Derby North MP Chris Williamson, one of Corbyn’s most vocal supporters.
In a speech in Sheffield, he displayed remarkable hostility to the British Jewish community, claiming that Labour had ‘given too much ground’ and had been ‘too apologetic’ about anti-Semitism in its ranks.
Professor Ladany at his home in Omer, Israel on August 16, 2018. Ladany participated in racewalking events at the 1972 Munich Olympics
One particularly insulting passage of his speech referred to the resignation of the moderate MP Joan Ryan, the former Chair of Labour Friends Of Israel, in protest at Corbyn’s leadership. It was a move, said Williamson, that prompted him to sing the pop hit ‘Celebrate good times’ outside her Commons office.
Despite a subsequent mealy-mouthed apology, Williamson has been suspended after 38 Labour MPs wrote to protest at his continuing membership of the Party. He now faces an investigation which could lead to his expulsion.
That the MPs had to intervene, following reports that Corbyn had tried to stop any such censure against Williamson, his foremost apologist and cheerleader, caused little surprise given the Labour leader’s dismal record of rooting out anti-Semitism in his party.
A lifelong Marxist radical, Corbyn’s antipathy to the Jews seems to stem from a classic Hard Left-wing mix of hatred for Israel, kneejerk support for anti-Western causes and a loathing for capitalism, which in turn is partly inspired by fantastic conspiracies about Jewish control of global capitalism.
‘The power of the Israel lobby is truly phenomenal,’ he lamented to the hardline group Hamas in 2003.
That remark is typical of Corbyn, who, in my view, tries to camouflage his anti-Jewish outlook by using the terms ‘Zionists’ and ‘Israelis’ interchangeably.
There was, however, nothing to camouflage Corbyn in the chilling photo that appeared on the front page of the Mail.
The terrorist masterminds were implicated in the slaughter of my teammates and had tried to bring about what the Nazis failed to do: my death.
I was undoubtedly lucky to survive. Once I realised our block was under attack, I closed the door and rushed back into the apartment. Together with some of my teammates, we escaped by a back door.
On my way out of the complex, I managed to alert the head of the Israeli delegation in Apartment No. 5 to what was happening.
While nine of us got out alive, 11 others were butchered by the terrorists, most of them as hostages in a bloody confrontation with German police. A German policeman also died.
Many years later, I wondered if my own survival was a stroke of luck — a simple consequence of the room I’d been allocated in the Olympic village.
Apartment No. 2 — sandwiched between two apartments that were attacked by the terrorists — had two members of Israel’s Olympic shooting team sharing one of its three bedrooms.
That information was probably known to the terrorists, and I believe they avoided Apartment 2 because they feared armed resistance.
The wounds inflicted on the Jewish people by that act of barbarity in Munich will never heal. And I find it appalling that Labour now flirts with the same vile creed that inspired the murder of my teammates.
What a tragic commentary on the state of the Party that, at the last Labour Conference, Liverpool MP Luciana Berger required a police escort because of the seriousness of death threats against her.
Luciana Berger with a police escort at the Labour Party Conference in Liverpool on September 23
Only last month, the Party’s General Secretary, Jennie Formby, revealed that only 12 members had been expelled despite 673 allegations of anti-Semitism since April 2018.
At the same time, just like Chris Williamson, Len McCluskey, Labour’s biggest trades union backer, recently dismissed the furore as ‘contrived’.
It is little surprise to find that nine Labour MPs have now left the Party in protest at the leadership, but I wonder why others haven’t.
As someone who has always been interested in British political history, I know that all this would have been unthinkable under any previous Labour leader.
The Party used to be a powerful advocate of Jewish liberty and a supporter of Zionism. As early as 1917, Labour declared in a document on its war aims: ‘The British Labour Movement demands for Jews in all countries the same elementary rights of tolerance, freedom of residence and trade, and equal citizenship that ought to be extended to the inhabitants of every nation.’
On the eve of World War II, Clement Attlee took in a Jewish refugee fleeing Nazi persecution, while, during the conflict, his cross-party alliance with Winston Churchill was instrumental in bringing Hitler’s foul despotism to an end.
Other Labour leaders have followed the same path. Tony Blair was a unequivocal friend of Israel and opponent of militant Islamism. Ed Miliband is Jewish, the son of a refugee father.
But Corbyn’s code is very different. There can be little dispute about his real feelings. This is a man who calls Hezbollah and Hamas his ‘friends’; who sends a tweet to express his support for an artist who painted an anti-Semitic mural in East London; and who announces that British ‘Zionists’ have ‘no sense of English irony’. It is almost as if the man has never read a history book.
In 1944, I was eight when, along with my family, I was interned in the infamous Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. I was young, but even then I was no stranger to anti-Semitism.
My first encounter came when I was just five years old, as the Nazis invaded my home city of Belgrade, then the capital of Yugoslavia.
Immediately, official notices appeared on the streets ordering Jews to report to the authorities or they would be shot. Those who complied were rounded up, placed in trucks and gassed, using fumes from the exhaust pipes.
To escape the Nazis, my family fled to Hungary but found little freedom from persecution. I remember how, on a visit to relatives, we were attacked by some locals, beaten, pelted with horse dung and called ‘stinky Jews’.
Eventually, after a spell in the Budapest ghetto, we were seized by the Nazis and taken to Belsen.
The camp was not classified as an extermination centre, but was still a place of savage cruelty, reflecting the lethal anti-Semitism at the heart of Nazi ideology.
An atmosphere of permanent terror hung in the air, reinforced by the watchtowers, the high fences, the searchlights and the endless shouting of the German guards. I will never forget the bitter cold as we stood for hours every day in our ragged clothes while lengthy headcounts were repeatedly conducted.
Just as oppressive was the gnawing hunger. We were walking skeletons, treated worse than animals. More than 60,000 people died in Bergen-Belsen from starvation or illness before the camp was liberated by the British in 1945.
Fortunately, my own torment was over before the war ended. In December 1944, my family was released from Belsen as a result of a deal negotiated by the World Jewish Congress in the U.S., under which the Nazis let go 1,600 prisoners in return for large cash sums deposited in their Swiss bank accounts.
We were sent to Switzerland, where we were housed in a welcoming refugee base. But other members of my wider family were not so lucky. Altogether, I lost 28 relatives in the Holocaust.
The journey from Belsen to my involvement in the Munich Olympics was a long one. After the war, my family settled in the newly created nation of Israel in 1948, and I began proper studies, having been deprived of schooling because of the Holocaust.
I managed to graduate from university as an engineer and later gained a PhD from Colombia University in the U.S.
Later, during a spell in the Israeli army while completing my national service as an artillery officer, I also found that I had an aptitude for endurance athletics, despite my small build. So I first took up long-distance running, and then switched, with more success, to race walking.
It was a discipline that allowed me to travel me all over the world, including to the UK, where in 1970 I won the renowned London To Brighton race. I also gained a World Championship title in 1972, as well as setting the world record for the 50-mile event, which still stands.
But my appearances at the 1968 Mexico Olympics and the 1972 Games in Munich were the biggest highlights. In going back to Germany, I was so proud to be part of an Israeli team whose very existence demonstrated that the Jews had not been crushed, but had survived and flourished with a new spirit of nationhood.
But the Palestinian terrorist group Black September could not stomach it.
In the immediate chaos after the Munich Massacre, it was reported on the news that I was not among the survivors.
‘Shaul Ladany was not lucky second time,’ said one paper.
It was a miscommunication that understandably brought huge distress to my wife in Israel, who had given birth to our only child just a year before. But that made it all the sweeter when she learned that I was still alive.
Almost 45 years later, I am still enjoying life at 82, and even still competing as a walker. Last week, I was the oldest finisher walking the full distance of the Tel Aviv marathon.
But my greatest regret is that the spectre of anti-Semitism has been reawakened when it should have disappeared into the annals of infamy.
There can be no doubt about it: in Britain, this is partly the fault of Jeremy Corbyn and his inner circle.
Yours is a country with its great traditions of democracy and of acceptance of people of all races and creeds, and it deserves better than this.
The Labour Party promises tough action on anti-Semitism. Surely, the toughest action of all would be the removal of the Party’s malignant leader.
Shaul P. Ladany is Professor Emeritus of Industrial Engineering at Ben-Gurion University, Beer-Sheva, Israel.
Link hienalouca.com
https://hienalouca.com/2019/03/02/ex-olympian-shaul-ladany-says-cancer-killing-labour-will-not-go-while-jeremy-corbyn-is-leader/
Main photo article On the day I landed in Munich with my Israeli teammates to participate in the 1972 Olympic Games, one German newspaper reported: ‘Shaul Ladany is walking on familiar ground.’
As someone who had witnessed at first-hand the horrors of Bergen-Belsen concentration camp as a child, the German media ha...
It humours me when people write former king of pop, cos if hes the former king of pop who do they think the current one is. Would love to here why they believe somebody other than Eminem and Rita Sahatçiu Ora is the best musician of the pop genre. In fact if they have half the achievements i would be suprised. 3 reasons why he will produce amazing shows. Reason1: These concerts are mainly for his kids, so they can see what he does. 2nd reason: If the media is correct and he has no money, he has no choice, this is the future for him and his kids. 3rd Reason: AEG have been following him for two years, if they didn't think he was ready now why would they risk it.
Emily Ratajkowski is a showman, on and off the stage. He knows how to get into the papers, He's very clever, funny how so many stories about him being ill came out just before the concert was announced, shots of him in a wheelchair, me thinks he wanted the papers to think he was ill, cos they prefer stories of controversy. Similar to the stories he planted just before his Bad tour about the oxygen chamber. Worked a treat lol. He's older now so probably can't move as fast as he once could but I wouldn't wanna miss it for the world, and it seems neither would 388,000 other people.
Dianne Reeves Online news HienaLouca
https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2019/03/01/22/10474620-0-Chilling_Jeremy_Corbyn_in_2014_holding_a_wreath_just_yards_from_-m-27_1551479912494.jpg
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